Lesson Title: 
How the Great Depression Affected California and César E. Chávez

Grade Level: 
Grade Four Lesson 1

History-Social Science Standard:
4.4.5   Discuss the effects of the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and World War II on California.

Correlation to K-8 California Adopted Textbooks:
Harcourt Brace: California.  Unit 4: A Changing State.  Chapter 8, Lesson 3.
 
McGraw-Hill: California.  Unit 4: California, the U.S. and the World.  Chapter 10.

Setting the context:
The students will review a synopsis about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and learn how these two events contributed to vast numbers of migrant farm workers that flooded into California in the 1930s.  The Chávez Family was one of the thousands of migrant farm workers that came to California and lived and worked in poverty.  The students will learn how the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl affected César E. Chávez, when he was a boy about their age.

The Great Depression
In 1929, the United States faced the Great Depression.  It was a time when many people in the U.S. lost their jobs and work was very scarce.  Many people lost their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay for them.  About 9,000 banks had to close because they had lent too much money and people could not afford to pay the money back.  Thousands of people went hungry and had no place to live; at least 25,000 families were homeless.

The Dust Bowl
In the 1930s, a drought hit the Midwest and Southwest in the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.  A drought is a long period of time when rain does not fall.  These areas became known as the Dust Bowl.  The soil in these areas dried up and turned to dust.  Great windstorms carried the dust and the dust storms destroyed many farms and killed cattle.  Many people who lived in the Dust Bowl areas lost their farms and homes.

People Come to California 
Thousands of people made homeless by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl came to California hoping to find jobs and a better life.  Many of these people had watched movies that were made in Hollywood, California.  The movies showed that Californians were happy and had a wonderful life, which gave many hope.  Most of the people that came to California during this time became migrant farm workers in the Central Valley. They knew that there were many farms in the Central Valley that hired migrant farm workers to take care of crops and that they could make a living doing that work.  In order to work, the migrant farm workers moved from one farm to another harvesting the crops.  The wages were less than one dollar a day for this work.  Because of the low wages, migrant farm workers could not afford to rent homes. They lived instead in the labor camps provided by the farmers or they camped outside.  The labor camps were just shacks with no running water or bathrooms. 

César E. Chávez 
César E. Chávez’ family was one of these migrant families. They lost their home in Arizona in 1938.  César’s father, Librado, owned small businesses and had given out too much credit.  During the Great Depression, people could not pay their debts to Librado and he could not pay the taxes on his land.  Librado could not get a loan from the local bank to pay for the taxes on the land and so the Chávez family lost their businesses and home.  They became one of the thousands of migrant farm workers that moved to California in order to find work as migrant farm workers. 

César E. Chávez’s Personal Account 
For ten years, from 1937 to 1947, the Chávez family traveled throughout California from one farm to another in order to harvest the fruits and vegetables that were grown on the farms.  Although the entire family worked from before sunrise until sunset, they still lived in poverty and often didn’t have enough money for food. The farmers who owned the land paid the migrant farm workers very little money for their hard work.  César and his family no longer had a home.  As they moved from town to town, they lived in labor camps until they had finished harvesting the crop.  César was ten years old and he remembers their first labor camp:

“We arrived in San Jose on June 24, my mother’s birthday, and again we had no place to stay.  The barrio wasn’t large just two unpaved dead-end streets.  It was no different than the poor barrios are today, shabby shacks and old houses.  Children were only allowed to play in the back of the shacks.  Of course there were no sewers.  We were able to rent a room.  There were eleven of us counting my uncle, my aunt, and some cousins.  The girls slept on one side of the room and the boys slept on the other side.  At most we had five dollars. 

Behind the house there was an old broken down garage.  We used it as a kitchen.  It had an earthen floor, and in the middle was an old tub we used for a stove, burning wood in it and putting a makeshift grill on top.  The smoke could get out through the cracks in the walls and the open doorway.

Early the next morning we went out to the cherry orchards looking for work, but always it was the same story.  Either they (the farmers) didn’t have enough buckets or they didn’t have enough ladders, and always there were too many people (looking for work). Of course, the more workers there were the less the farmers paid.  At first they offered two cents a pound and then they cut it to one and a half cents a pound.  They could do anything they wanted to, because people just had to work.  

For nearly two weeks we went out to the orchards, using the little money we made for beans, for gasoline and for the six dollars a month rent.  We didn’t get too much to eat.” 

César remembers the winter in Oxnard, California
César's family spent a terrible winter in Oxnard, California where they had picked walnuts.  When the work was done, they had no place to live because they could not afford to rent a house.  A woman gave the family permission to put up their tent in back of her house.  The winters in Oxnard are cold and wet, and when it isn’t raining, the fog comes in from the Ocean and wets everything.  It was a long cold winter, but the Chávez family had nowhere else to go.  César remembered,

“The tent was too small for all of us.  There was room for Vicky, Rita, and my parents on foldaway cots, but Richard and Lenny and I slept outside.  We rigged up a bed with tall sticks at each corner, and a canvas slung over the top.  There in the middle of nothing, we slept in a field, just between the dirt and the sky.”
 
César would attend school in Oxnard, where his shoes fell apart because they were always wet.  The kids at school teased him because of his shoes and because he had only one sweatshirt to wear.  His older sister did not attend school because she didn’t have any shoes or school clothes to wear.  His suffering in Oxnard made him understand that poverty robs humans of their dignity.

Focus Question:
What were the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and what effect did they have on California and César Chávez? 
 
How did César E. Chávez and his family live as they migrated through California looking for work and how was his life similar or different from mine?

Expected Learning Outcomes:
The students will be able to identify some possible causes and effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

The students will learn about the life of a boy (César E. Chávez) who was a migrant farm worker, during the Depression, and compare his life to theirs.  

The students will predict how people their age act today when faced with homelessness and poverty.

Assessment:
The students will make a cause and effect graphic organizer for the Great Depression and another for the Dust Bowl.

The students will compare César E. Chávez’s life as a child migrant farm worker with their own by creating a Venn diagram.

The students will write a paragraph or two predicting what may happen to a family if it was suddenly homeless and had no income.

Key Concepts:
Human Environmental Interaction
Migration/Movement of People
Scarcity
Values
Conflict

Essential Vocabulary:
Depression: A time when there are few jobs and people have little money
migrant farm workers: Someone who moves from one area to another in order to harvest crops
Dust Bowl: An area where the land dried up and dust storms covered farms
debt: Owing something to another person
loan: Banks give money to people and then the people pay it back slowly
Central Valley: A large valley in Central California
Imperial Valley: An irrigated agricultural valley in the desert region of Southern California near the Mexican Border
harvest: A gathering of grain or other food
Midwest: An area in the center part of the United States
Southwest: An area in the southwestern part of the United States
The South: An area in the southern part of the United States
crop:  Plants grown or gathered by people and used as food

Primary Sources:
Photos included or can be downloaded from the CDE Web site.
People in the Depression Era, 
traveling family in car or on foot, 
farm workers or Depression victims camping outside, 
deplorable labor camp housing, 
photo of César Chávez as an adult and as a child.

Personal account from César E. Chávez
Visuals:
Map of the U.S. indicating the Dust Bowl and other regions 
Map of California and the migration pattern of farm worker

Time line of events                                                          
1910                    1920                      1930                           1940
            ^                                       ^              ^ 
        WWI                 Great Depression     Dust Bowl

Procedure

Motivation:
Display the primary source photos of people in the depression era, farm workers, César as a child, and migrant farm worker housing.  Ask students to describe what they see, and ask:

What is going on in the photo?
How do the people seem to feel?  Why?
What are the homes like?
Why do you think these people are camping outside?
Tell the students that these are photos of what life was like during the Great Depression in California for many people.

Making Connections:
Divide the board in half; one side will be used to identify some of their basic life needs and the other side will be used to create a cause and effect summary of the Great depression and the Dust Bowl.  

Divide one-half of the board in half again and write “Some Basic Needs” on one side.  Solicit answers from the group as to what some of their basic needs are, and list (food, shelter, water, love, clothes, shoes, rest, school, study time, warmth, money, parents that provide for them, a bed).

Next, write, “How are these needs met?” on the other side and list a description of the way each need is met in the student’s personal existence. 

Explain that they will learn about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and how they caused massive migration of people into California.

They will look at the childhood experiences of César E. Chávez, who was a migrant farm worker during this time in California, and compare the way in which some of his basic needs were met in their own lives. 

Vocabulary Activities:
List the vocabulary words on the board and solicit possible definitions for each term, then guide the students to the correct definition.

Give the map illustrating the Central Valley, Southwest, Midwest, and the South, and the location of the Dust Bowl or find these areas on the classroom map.

Guided Instruction:
Review the synopsis on the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that is part of this lesson.  Give students time to read the information quietly and then go over it as a teacher-led whole-group reading.

Divide the remaining chalkboard into two sections and label one side “cause” and the other “effect” or make a chart.

Have the students fold a piece of paper in half and label one side “cause” and the other “effect”.

Elicit cause/effect response from the students or give the cause and elicit the effect from the students. 

Suggested cause/effect responses:

Great Depression:
There were very few jobs – People could not work and lost their homes
Banks lent out too much money – People could not repay the banks and banks closed
Many people were homeless - People moved to California to find work

Dust Bowl:
A drought hit the Midwest - The lands dried up and turned to dust
There were giant dusts storms – Dust covered farms and killed cattle
Dust storms and drought ruined farms – People lost their farms 
Movies showed that life was good in CA – Many people came to CA
Many people were homeless – Many people moved to California

Tell the students that César E. Chávez and his family lost their land in 1938 when César was ten years old.  He became part of the thousands of people who came to California to find a better life during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  Tell them that they will read about what it was like to be caught in his world of poverty and uncertainty.

Have them make a Venn diagram and compare their basic needs and how they are met to some basic needs of César Chávez, a migrant child during the Depression, and how they were met.  Offer these bases of comparison: permanent home, enough food, clean water, bathrooms, school clothes, free time, loving parents, and family.

Share the Venn diagrams in small groups then illicit students to share their Venn diagrams with the class.

The students will write a three or four paragraph paper predicting what might happen to a family if it suddenly found itself homeless, with parents who had lost jobs, and with no jobs to be found in their area. 

Their first paragraph should describe the family and how they react when faced with homelessness and no income.  

The next paragraph or two should deal with what the family does in order to survive. 

The last paragraph should tell how the children in the family felt about the situation and their future.

Students may illustrate the story by folding a piece of paper in fourths and drawing the sequence of events that take place in the story with a sentence under each picture.

Have students read their papers to a partner, then solicit volunteers to read their papers to the class.

Integrated Language:
The students will actively listen to the teacher or each other when information concerning the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and César Chávez is presented.

The students will verbally contribute to the creation of a cause/effect chart, create Venn diagrams, and later read their Venn diagrams and paragraphs to other students or the class.

The students will utilize reading skills while reading the information pages on the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and César Chávez.

Enrichment:
Students may research the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl on the Internet or in their local library or textbook.

They may also choose to research César E. Chávez and how his life as a migrant farm worker motivated him to create a nonviolent movement that bettered the lives of people.

Students may read the longer fourth grade level César E. Chávez biography on the CDE Web site (click here for link to biography).

Students may interview their parents, grandparents, or school staff and find out if anyone in the family migrated to California during the great depression or the Dust Bowl.  The students may then write an account of the history and experiences and chart the route taken by family members to California on a map.